As ‘The Jinx’ Airs, Inquiry Into Death of Durst’s Friend Is Said to Be Reopened

Over the course of 33 years, Robert A. Durst, the wealthy, peripatetic son of a New York real estate family, has been an elusive suspect in the deaths of three people in three states.

He was found not guilty of murder in a 2001 killing in Texas despite gruesome testimony that he cut up the body of a neighbor and tossed the pieces into Galveston Bay. Investigators in New York and Los Angeles have long been frustrated by their inability to bring charges against him relating to the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst, and the execution-style killing of a close friend and confidante.

But the district attorney in Los Angeles has recently reopened an investigation into the killing of Mr. Durst’s friend, Susan Berman, in December 2000, and is tying it to the case about his missing wife in New York, according to four people who have spoken to investigators.

Their inquiry could be bolstered by new evidence shown publicly for the first time on Sunday in the fifth episode of an HBO documentary about Mr. Durst: “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” The evidence suggests that on the day Ms. Berman is believed to have been killed, Mr. Durst knew about her death and knew that her body was inside her Benedict Canyon home.

In recent weeks, investigators from Los Angeles, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and an investigator from the New York State Police, have interviewed witnesses in New York City, according to the people who have talked to the authorities.

The investigators asked the witnesses, who requested anonymity, not to discuss the case with anyone for fear that it would interfere with their investigation.

“The New York State Police and the Westchester district attorney’s office are still looking into Kathleen’s disappearance,” Joseph C. Becerra, the State Police investigator who sat in on some of the interviews, said. “It’s always been an ongoing case, until there’s a resolution one way or the other.”

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney, Jackie Lacey, declined to comment.

Last week, Mr. Durst, 71 and frail, said in a telephone interview that he did not have the “faintest idea” who killed Ms. Berman, nor did he know what happened to his first wife, who has been declared legally dead. Speaking in a gravelly monotone, he did say that he felt “complicit” in the disintegration of their marriage and the violent episodes that accompanied it.

Investigators in New York and Los Angeles have long known that Mr. Durst was in California at the time Ms. Berman was killed.

Although he was a suspect in her death, the police never had definitive evidence placing Mr. Durst in Los Angeles at the time of her death. The police also suspected that Mr. Durst was the author of an anonymous note sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department alerting them to a “cadaver” at Ms. Berman’s home. The letter was postmarked Dec. 23, 2000, the day California officials said they believed the murder occurred.

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A 1982 notice asking for information about the disappearance of Mr. Durst’s first wife, Kathleen. The disappearance is still unsolved, as is Ms. Berman’s killing.CreditG. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

In a scene during the “Jinx” episode on Sunday, Ms. Berman’s stepson, Sareb Kaufman, calls the documentary’s producer Marc Smerling to say that he had discovered a 1999 letter from Mr. Durst to Ms. Berman among the boxes of her belongings in his apartment.

Comparing the two notes, a visibly shaken Mr. Kaufman notes that the block lettering used on the envelope of the newly discovered letter appears to be identical to the lettering on the “cadaver” note. And Beverly Hills is misspelled as “Beverley” on both notes.

The mysteries and the deaths surrounding Mr. Durst, who is estranged from his family, have captivated investigators and inspired hundreds of newspaper articles, magazine stories, four books and a 2010 feature film, “All Good Things,” by the same filmmakers — Mr. Smerling and Andrew Jarecki — who produced “The Jinx,” based in part on 25 hours of interviews with Mr. Durst.

His story has something for everyone: murder mysteries, cross-dressing, a nationwide manhunt and a prominent family whose empire embraces 11 skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan.

Robert Durst, the oldest son of the billionaire Seymour Durst, said he was devastated by the suicide of his mother when he was 7. He largely severed ties to the family in 1994, after his father turned the company over to his younger brother Douglas Durst.

Robert Durst married Kathleen A. McCormack, a dental hygienist, in 1973, before joining the family firm, the Durst Organization. But by 1982, the marriage was falling apart and his wife wanted a divorce.

But Kathie Durst, as she was known, disappeared, after an argument at the couple’s cottage north of Manhattan in South Salem, N.Y.

Mr. Durst, who has homes in Harlem and Houston, gave conflicting accounts of what happened the last evening he saw her. Ms. Berman, a close friend whom he had met at graduate school in Los Angeles, served as an unofficial liaison with the press.

At the time, Mr. Durst suggested that his wife might have run away with a drug dealer, but her friends and family remained focused on Mr. Durst even after the case lost steam.

Mr. Durst was back in the headlines in 2000 when newspaper reports surfaced that he was at the center of a newly reopened investigation into his wife’s disappearance by Mr. Becerra and the Westchester County district attorney. Mr. Becerra said in 2000 that the new inquiry arose from an unrelated investigation in the county in the fall of 1999.

Mr. Durst fled New York and, posing as a mute woman, rented a $300-a-month room in downtown Galveston, Tex.

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Mr. Durst in court in December.CreditMike Segar/Reuters

In “The Jinx,” Mr. Durst said Ms. Berman contacted him to commiserate over the new investigation. They had been out of touch for years, but in response to a recent plea for financial help, he sent her $50,000.

Not long after that, she was murdered. On Dec. 24, the police discovered Ms. Berman, a writer, in her home, shot in the back of the head. Investigators initially suspected a business associate of Ms. Berman’s.

Ten months later, in October 2001, Mr. Durst was arrested in Galveston on charges that he killed a man, Morris Black, who lived across the hall, dismembering the body and dumping the torso and limbs into the bay. The head was never found.

Mr. Durst jumped bail in Galveston and was eventually arrested in Bethlehem, Pa., accused of stealing a chicken salad sandwich. The police said he had $500 in his pocket and $38,000 in his car, along with two guns and a bag of marijuana.

While he sat in jail in Texas, the Los Angeles police sought a handwriting sample from Mr. Durst to compare with the “cadaver” letter. Investigators also compared a bullet fired from a 9-millimeter pistol found in Mr. Durst’s car after his arrest with the 9-millimeter bullet that killed Ms. Berman.

Both comparisons proved “inconclusive,” according to investigators then involved with the case.

Mr. Durst ultimately convinced a jury in Galveston that his neighbor’s death was self-defense and an accident that occurred while the two men grappled with a gun that went off when they fell to the floor.

In 2010, Mr. Durst agreed to meet with Mr. Jarecki and Mr. Smerling just before their lightly fictionalized film about Mr. Durst’s life, “All Good Things,” premiered. The filmmakers continued interviewing and researching Mr. Durst, eventually putting together a six-part documentary broadcast on HBO.

Investigators know from credit card receipts and phone bills that Mr. Durst flew from New York to San Francisco on Dec. 19, 2000, four days before Ms. Berman’s death. He transferred to a small plane for a 300-mile trip north to Trinidad, Calif., where he had recently sold his house, but still maintained an office.

Mr. Durst picked up his car in Trinidad and the next day headed south, stopping in Garberville, Calif., to make several calls from a pay phone.

The same day Ms. Berman was killed, Mr. Durst flew from San Francisco to New York.

Mr. Durst was asked in “The Jinx” about speculation that Ms. Berman was killed by someone who knew her and about the author of the “cadaver” note. He noted the block lettering, an attempt to disguise the author’s handwriting, and said: “If somebody liked her, why kill her? And now you’ve taken this big risk. You’re writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: As Durst Documentary Airs, Inquiry Into Friend’s Death Is Said to Be Reopened. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe